


Disorderly

by protostar (variablestar)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi is a Mess™, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 13:58:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10023836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/variablestar/pseuds/protostar
Summary: When Akaashi was absent from school, Bokuto figured he'd get a text or a call or a carrier pigeon explaining why.He did not.Akaashi is a bit of a mess, and Bokuto knows him better than anyone.





	

    Koutarou liked to think he knew Akaashi pretty well.  They’d been on the same volleyball team for over a year.  Afternoons consisted of late practices together, and weekends were spent in Akaashi’s room with a pile of homework and sweets from the nearby bakery.  They were _friends,_ and since this school year had started, they'd been doing  _something_ that felt an awful lot like dating.  So when Akaashi was absent from school, Koutarou figured he’d get a text or a call or a carrier pigeon explaining _why_.  
  
    He did not.  
  
    Koutarou showed up to morning practice, expecting a chance to practice his straights with his favorite setter, and possibly a wish of luck for the math exam he had that afternoon like he usually got.  Instead, he walked into the clubroom, and found a distinct lack of Akaashi.  
  
    Komi was there, splitting apple slices with Konoha.  Washio was in the corner struggling to get his practice shirt on, and Sarukui was stretching next to him, laughing.  But there was no Akaashi.  Akaashi was always first.  
  
    So, okay, maybe he was late.  People were late all the time.  Koutarou himself had shown up to class five minutes after the bell earlier that week, due to an issue involving a grasshopper, his shoelaces, and a deflated volleyball.  But then, Akaashi was never late, ever.  He kept two separate planners and a carefully organized wall calendar to ensure he never missed anything of importance (and volleyball was _pretty_ important), and had recently taken to setting reminders on his phone just as a back-up.  It was rude, he always told Koutarou, to waste other people’s time.  
  
    Then again, there were still four minutes until practice was technically scheduled to begin, and it was possible Akaashi had simply had a late start to the morning, or encountered some sort of difficulty.  But he would be there.  He _would_ be.  He _had_ to.  
  
    He never showed up.  
  
    Koutarou spent all of practice distracted, waiting for the setter to show up.  He’d gotten two balls to the face as a result, and rushed through clean-up in an effort to return to the clubroom and his phone as quickly as possible.  There would be a text, surely.  A voicemail, perhaps.  _Something_ to explain Akaashi’s absence.  
  
    He didn’t have any appointments, unless it was an emergency.  Koutarou knew, because Akaashi always made sure to tell the team ahead of time if he knew he’d be gone, and Koutarou always marked it down as a note in his phone.  He hadn’t seemed sick at all lately.  There was no tell-tale coughing or drowsiness.  And he hadn’t been studying for any upcoming exams over the weekend, so it wasn’t like he’d skipped purely to review at the last minute.  Akaashi wasn’t the type to do that anyway.  
  
    It nagged at Koutarou all through his classes.  He tried calling during lunch, but it went straight to voicemail.  He sent a handful of texts, to which he got no response.  
  
    This radio silence was unfamiliar.  They texted daily — mostly Koutarou leading the conversation with three, four, seven messages in a row before Akaashi would give his response, but Akaashi _always_ replied.  On a few occasions, Koutarou would call to ask about a homework problem or ask for his thoughts on different types of tarts, and Akaashi _always_ answered.  He never ignored him, or anyone else, for that matter.  It was impolite, he always said, to not acknowledge other people.  
  
    But, well, maybe his phone was simply out of battery.  Unlikely, considering how careful Akaashi always was to keep it charged.  He was always prepared for everything, with a box of band-aids in his backpack and a selection of snacks on hand for all situations.  No matter what happened, Akaashi was prepared.  Except, everyone made mistakes, right?  Everyone, even Akaashi.  It happened.  Maybe — _maybe_ — he’d gone to sleep thinking his phone was plugged in, when really it wasn’t, and so it was dead, and so his alarm had never gone off, and so he had overslept and was late that morning.  
  
    It was a brilliant explanation, that Koutarou would have accepted, if it weren’t for the fact that he knew Akaashi had an alarm clock separate from his phone that worked perfectly.  
  
    Afternoon practice dragged.  All he could think about was where his setter might be.  If it was simply that he’d shown up late that morning, then he would have spent his lunch talking to his teacher to gather anything he might have missed, and so _of course_ he hadn’t had a chance to eat with Koutarou like he usually did, or answer his messages, like he always did.  If it was simply that he’d shown up late that morning, then he would have been at afternoon practice, and it would have been perfectly fine.  Except it clearly wasn’t that he’d simply shown up late that morning, because he still wasn’t there, still hadn’t texted Koutarou, and still didn’t show in the gym.  
  
    Akaashi was MIA.  
  
    Halfway through practice, Koutarou started to think that maybe something _awful_ had happened.  There could have been some sort of accident.  Something could have gone wrong with Akaashi, or someone in his family, and that was why Koutarou was being left in the dark.  
  
    This train of thought distracted him enough that he ended up with Konoha running directly into him, elbow in his neck and knee digging into the back of his thigh.  
  
    Practice ended early.  
  
    Koutarou didn’t bother changing out of his practice uniform.  He simply grabbed his bag and hurried out, calling Akaashi on his way.  There was no answer.  His stomach was tying itself into knots.  
  
    Some sort of tragedy was the only thing Koutarou could come up with that really explained why Akaashi would be gone.  Only something serious would lead him to ignore anyone like this.  It was rude to be late and impolite to refuse to acknowledge someone, but it was perfectly acceptable, Akaashi had once said, to push manners aside in the case of an emergency.  
  
    He sent one last text to Akaashi, just in case all the others had simply gone undelivered, but there wasn’t any response, so he pocketed his phone.  Would it be rude to show up at Akaashi’s door to ask for answers?  He was going to, regardless, but was that impolite?  Koutarou always wanted to be respectful, with Akaashi especially.  He never overstepped bounds or pushed further than he should.  He’d learned to watch for the signs that Akaashi was uncomfortable with a situation; he’d get tense and his speech would be clipped.  And the biggest one, of course, was his hands.  
  
    Koutarou was always watching Akaashi’s hands, even before he realized they were the best way to distinguish his moods.  His hands were elegant, his fingers long and graceful.  When he set a volleyball, they were precise — carefully forceful.  And they were always fidgeting.  He would tap his thumb against his thigh, twist his fingers together.  And Koutarou was always watching.  It was how he’d learned that when Akaashi was nervous, he’d fold his hands together and rub one thumb over the other.  When he was uncomfortable with a situation, he’d lace his fingers, letting one tap an incessant rhythm against the back of his hand.  When he was thinking, his fingers would drum against the table or his leg, or sometimes Koutarou’s shoulder.  His hands never stopped moving, never stopped fidgeting.  
  
    That was why, when Koutarou knocked on his front door, and — after a couple moments — Akaashi Keiji opened the door, looking to be in perfect condition, Koutarou’s eyes went to his hands first.  They were completely _still_ at his sides.  And that was perhaps the worst thing they could have been doing, because Koutarou didn’t know what to make of that.  
  
    “Bokuto-san,” Akaashi said, his eyebrows raised.  At least that told Koutarou that he wasn’t expecting this visit.  That gave him _something_.  “Hello.  Can I help you?”  He wasn’t dressed.  He still wore the sweatpants he slept in, with the custard stain on the left ankle, and a t-shirt Koutarou had gotten him for his last birthday.  (It had a clever saying about setters on the back, and Akaashi had snorted a laugh when he’d opened it.)  He didn’t look sick.  His hair was maybe messier than usual, and he looked like he might be slightly cold — though that was likely from the outside air — but overall, he seemed . . . _fine_.  
  
    Koutarou was observant.  He could get distracted, and he sometimes missed little details here and there, but he always _looked_ and _watched_.  Especially when it came to Akaashi.  So if something was wrong, he should have noticed.  He should have noticed _immediately_.  And he _didn’t_.  
  
    “You weren’t at school,” he managed to say, after a short pause.  “Or practice.  And you didn’t text me.”  Koutarou frowned.  He didn’t want to ask.  He didn’t want to _have_ to ask.  He wanted to be able to tell on his own exactly what was going through Akaashi’s head at that moment, but he _couldn’t_ , because his hands were still and he looked relaxed enough, and Koutarou couldn’t figure out _anything_ , so he forced out the words, “Are you okay?”  
  
    Akaashi was polite and organized.  He spent more time thinking than he did talking, and he never forgot anything.  He could rarely keep his hands still, and he preferred pear tarts to strawberry.  He liked to tease Koutarou, but only when the time was right, and he never — _never_ — ignored anything or anyone.  The band-aids in his backpack were always patterned, never plain and tan, and he chewed the inside of his cheek when he couldn’t remember the right word for something.  Koutarou knew these things.  He _knew_ these things.  He knew _Akaashi_.  
  
    So when Akaashi’s shoulders hunched the slightest bit inward, and his fingers curled into his palms, Koutarou knew what it meant.  He knew the meaning behind the words, “I had a long night is all.”  Akaashi telling him that he’d only gotten up a little bit ago was enough for Koutarou to understand what was happening.  And when he stepped back from the doorway, Koutarou took the gesture for the invitation it was, and stepped inside.  
  
    “I should have messaged you,” Akaashi said.  “I just—“  
  
    “No, no, no,” Koutarou interrupted with a sharp shake of his head.  “It’s okay.”  
  
    Akaashi was polite and organized.  He color-coded all the writing in his planners, and double-knotted his shoelaces.  He always offered his notes to classmates that had absences and had, on a few occasions, helped teach missed material.  The first time he’d come to Koutarou’s house, he’d spent fifteen minutes tidying the kitchen.  His school uniform was always crisp and clean, and he often redid the knot of Koutarou’s tie after morning practices.  He liked to twist his fingers in Koutarou’s hair while he sat and read on Sunday afternoons, always making a mess of it, but it wasn’t like either of them cared much.  
  
    “Did you get enough sleep?” Koutarou asked.  He brought a hand to fix the sleeve of Akaashi’s shirt, where the end had folded up awkwardly.  He lingered.  
  
    “A few hours,” Akaashi told him.  His hands folded together, and he pulled at one of his fingers.  His toes curled against the floor.  “It’s too bright out to rest now.”  
  
    Koutarou hummed and rocked on the balls of his feet.  Akaashi’s sleeve was straightened, but he kept tugging on it as he thought.  
  
    Akaashi was polite and organized.  But he was also kind of a mess.  His socks hardly ever matched.  He sometimes texted Koutarou past two in the morning about one of the many television dramas he liked to watch, and there were days where he forgot to eat much more than a cup of ramen.  He dog-eared the pages of his books and scolded himself for it immediately after.  The stain on his sweatpants was the result of Akaashi being distracted and forgetting he even had the custard in his lap, and ended up spilling it.  And there were some nights where he simply couldn’t manage to fall asleep, no matter how much he wanted to.  
  
    Koutarou knew this.  He knew that Akaashi had trouble sleeping some nights, and that was why he’d send middle-of-the-night messages about drama between fictional characters and forget which day of the week it was.  Those nights, he was restless, and in the morning, he’d either be half-slumped over, or he’d crash face-first onto the floor while trying to tie his shoes, and wouldn’t wake up until someone came to find him.  
  
    Akaashi was polite and organized, because he was kind of a mess.  And Koutarou was always ready to be there when the messy side took over.  
  
    “Did you eat?” Koutarou asked.  He twisted Akaashi’s shirt sleeve between his fingers.  
  
    When Akaashi shook his head, Koutarou nodded and started walking towards the kitchen.  He pulled Akaashi with him, letting his hand slide down from his shirt to his hand.  Koutarou didn’t know how to cook much more than the basics, so they ended up with yakisoba, which they ate in front of the television, one of Akaashi’s dramas playing.  
  
    Akaashi sat between Koutarou’s legs, head against his chest, their legs overlapping.  Akaashi wasn’t necessarily free with touch, but Koutarou was always the exception.  They were almost always touching in some way, but especially when it was quiet and they were alone.  They’d study with Koutarou’s head on Akaashi’s stomach, or facing away from each other with their backs pressed together.  Akaashi liked to read in Koutarou’s lap, with his legs wrapped around his middle and chin resting on his shoulder, while Koutarou watched something on his laptop or texted Kuroo.  He melted with neck kisses and always managed to find a way to settle his hands under Koutarou's shirt to rest his fingers at the base of his spine.  He loved for Koutarou to run fingers through his hair when they hid in the clubroom during lunch.

    They sat for a while, even when the episode ended and their food was gone.  Akaashi pulled a blanket from the couch to cover their laps with, and Koutarou curled his arms around his shoulders.  After a while, Akaashi’s breathing evened out with sleep, and Koutarou tucked Akaashi's head under his chin.  
  
    Akaashi Keiji was a polite and organized mess.  He’d missed the full day, and he’d forgotten to text Koutarou, and sometimes he forgot to turn off his bedroom light before leaving the house.  He was a mess, and that was fine, because Koutarou was always there to pick up after him.

**Author's Note:**

> this is totally all over the place and i got way off-base from what i intended to write but that's okay
> 
> thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed it!!♡  
> here's my [tumblr](http://reynclds07.tumblr.com/) if you're at all interested!


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